Combat Motivation

"What men will fight for seems to be worth looking into," H. L. Mencken noted shortly after the close of the First World War. Prior to that war, although many military commanders and theorists had throughout history shown an aptitude for devising maxims concerning esprit de corps, fighting spirit, morale, and the like, military organizations had rarely sought either to understand or to promote combat motivation. For example, an officer who graduated from the Royal Military College (Sandhurst) at the end of the nineteenth century later commented that the art of leadership was utterly neglected (Charlton 1931, p. 48), while General Wavell recalled that during his course at the British Staff College at Camberley (1909-1 0) insufficient stress was laid "on the factor of morale, or how to induce it and maintain it'' (quoted in Connell1964, p. 63). The First World War forced commanders and staffs to take account of psychological factors and to anticipate wideJy varied responses to the combat environment because, unlike most previous wars, it was not fought by relatively small and homogeneous armies of regulars and trained reservists. The mobilization by the belligerents of about 65 million men (many of whom were enrolled under duress), the evidence of fairly widespread psychiatric breakdown, and the postwar disillusion (- xiii xiv PREFACE emplified in books like C. E. Montague's Disenchantment, published in 1922) all tended to dispel assumptions and to provoke questions about mo tivation and morale.

Explains the motivation of ordinary soldiers to enlist, serve and fight in the armies of eighteenth-century Europe.

General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War? It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country." McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war. Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it.

For decades, the Canadian Armed Forces has used the work of foreign scholars and writers in its professional military education to try to understand the human dimension of warfare: why and how people are motivated to fight, and how they behave once they do fight. Yet the specific Canadian context, experience, and perspective are often lost in favour of appeals to universal truths. The first major Canadian study of combat motivation in almost forty years, Why We Fight redresses this imbalance by presenting some of the best new work on the subject. Bringing together top military practitioners and scholars to discuss some of the most controversial issues of modern warfare, Why We Fight examines the face of battle as experienced by Canadians. It explores sexual violence in war, professionalism, organizations, leadership, shared intent, motivation in extremis, and the toxicity of the "warrior" culture. Its chapters offer key insights on combat motivation theories, the modern operating environment, and the collective and individual identities of the men and women who fight for Canada. Many worry that technology is leading us towards a post-human age, particularly in war. Why We Fight affirms the centrality of the human being in warfare in Canada's past, present, and future.

Why do soldiers fight? What keeps them going? What compels them to face death when their long-time comrades have fallen around them? Strangers in Arms addresses these questions in a groundbreaking study of the behaviour, morale, and motivations of Canadian infantrymen on the front lines of the Second World War. Canada’s army has long faced intense criticism for its combat performance during the war, and Canada’s official history has presented Canadian soldiers as deficient, inexperienced, and unprepared in comparison with their enemies. Questioning entrenched views, Robert Engen explores a trove of contemporaneous documents to create a remarkable new portrait of Canadians at war. Rather than the popular "band of brothers" image of soldier cohesion in battle, he finds staggering casualty rates and personnel turmoil that left Canadian infantrymen often working with and fighting beside men they hardly knew. Yet these strangers in arms continued to fight - effectively and in good spirits - against a tenacious and deadly enemy, triumphing in the face of heartrending loss and sacrifice. Challenging old narratives about the Canadian soldier and supported by cutting-edge empirical and qualitative research, Strangers in Arms crafts a new understanding of what happens at the sharp end of battle.